Odd Lots

Samanth Subramanian, author and journalist who wrote The Web Beneath the Waves, explains the hidden world of undersea fiber cables. He discusses how cables are surveyed, laid, repaired, and financed. He explores chokepoints like the Suez and Strait of Hormuz, why satellites cannot replace fiber, and the geopolitical and security tensions around this fragile infrastructure.

Megan Greene, external member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee and international economist, discusses repeated supply shocks and their compounding effects. She covers why policymakers may hold rates despite weak growth, how second‑round wage‑price dynamics matter, cross‑border spillovers, mortgage transmission differences, and the limits of monetary policy in fixing supply constraints.

Mariana Mazzucato, director at UCL’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose and author on the entrepreneurial state. She explores the mission economy and how states build capacity. Short takes on outsourcing vs. in‑house skills, AI’s public roots and how to govern it, and the history and value of moonshot-style public investments.

Matthew Tuerk, mayor of Allentown and a former economic development strategist, explains how the city is trying to rebuild manufacturing. They get into transistors, logistics, maker spaces, and why weight-gaining industries thrive there. There’s also talk of zoning reform, supply chains, data centers, and how a post Billy Joel identity is taking shape.

Brandon Scott, Baltimore’s mayor since 2020, joins for a brisk look at the city’s vacant housing fight. He gets into redlining, deindustrialization, absentee owners, and why redevelopment happens block by block. There’s also talk of affordable housing finance, falling violence, investor confidence, AI in city permitting, and why locals have mixed feelings about The Wire.

Salomon Aaron, a director at London gallery David Aaron and dinosaur fossil broker, dives into the wild private trade in ancient bones. He explores how fossils are found, authenticated, and priced. The conversation gets into auction records, legal provenance, risky composites, younger tech buyers, and why soaring prices can fund new excavations.

Eyck Freymann, a Hoover Institution fellow and author on China and Taiwan, maps out why Taiwan has become the world’s most dangerous chokepoint. He digs into Xi Jinping’s strategy, Taiwan’s tangled political status, rival parties’ views on China, the future of its semiconductor shield, and what deterrence could really look like.

Rob Goldstein, BlackRock COO and longtime architect of its tech strategy, talks about how a tech-first mindset helped build Aladdin. He gets into AI inside finance, from controls and workflow redesign to looming pressure on weaker SaaS tools. They also explore rising token demand, compute limits, and how private markets could become more transparent and blur with public assets.

Craig Manchuck, a veteran credit portfolio manager at Osterweis, and John Sheehan, a longtime fixed-income investor at Osterweis, unpack the private credit boom. They trace its roots before and after 2008. They dig into underwriting pressure, evergreen fund structures, gates, software lending, ties to private equity and insurance, and rising worries around defaults and a possible credit crunch.

Krista Lee, Bob Lee’s former wife and a close family confidante, shares the harrowing morning she knew something was wrong and the heartbreaking ripple effects on their children. It also traces how Bob Lee’s killing ignited Tech Twitter, fueled false narratives about San Francisco, and took a sharp turn when the arrest pointed away from a random attack.